Seoul Sojourn - Chaos in Costco

On Saturday we headed to the big city (Seoul) It is a massive city, over ten million and according to their current advertising campaign is the "soul of Asia". Oh such wit.

Kyle and Amy were super excited to go to Costco. They've kinda hit the 3 month wall that everyone talks about, where they can't take it and just really really wanna be home. So some western groceries were a big draw. We took the bus (with big hiking backpacks in tow) it took about an hour and half to the city. The bus was so nice....like the chairs were all leather lazyboys....and the bus fare was only 9,000 won.... $9.

We met Laura, a girl from Prov, and checked out one electronics district that was just ridiculous. Think like 8 malls put together, just electronics. I think there was like 50 camera stores. I didn't find a ton of stuff for my camera, though I did get a very good deal on a lens that was on my wish list. (If you're interested its the 18-180 super zoom that is just super versatile). If you owned a Canon or a Nikon you would have been in heaven!

Then we met another girl from Prov, Krista, and headed to Costco. We were supposed to meet up with 5 or 6 more Prov people but a dead cell phone prevented that. We took some subway trains which was kinda cool....they play classical music when they're getting close to a stop. We were wondering if it was like classical for the classy areas and rap for the ghetto, maybe techno for downtown.

Costco was similar, except, as you might expect in Asia, it was built up with several floors instead of one big one. There were so many people. Welcome to Asia I guess, but seriously, it was awful. You could not move, you could not turn around without crashing into someone. And people are pushy. Oh and Koreans haven't quite mastered the shopping thing yet either, like the up one side, down the other, that sort of thing...its just mass chaos. And there was a lot of "Oh look, Kimchi! I think I'll let my moving cart drift off wherever it may while I wander in a daze" going on. Enough to make an introvert cry. Before I started crying though I had a hotdog, which was the same as home and made me feel better.

The best part was yet to come though. We got to fill the 80litre backpack with 10,000 lbs of groceries and being the trek back. I was glad I took a pass on the bulk cranberry juice, lets just say that. We all survived the long hot sticky trek back and I had a long cold shower and collapsed into bed.